
Book __ ^ 2 S^ 



LECTURE 



ON THX 



CHARACTER AND SERVICES "jj"^ 



^g? 



OF 



JAMES MADISON, 

DELIVERED BEFORE THE 

"YOUNG MEN'S ASSOCIATION FOR MUTUAL IMPROVEMENT 
IN THE CITY OF ALBANY," FEBRUARY 28, 1837. 



BY DANIEL D. BARNARD. 






ALBANY- 

FROM THE POWER PRESS OF HOFFMAN AND WHITE. 

1837. 



E3^Z 



•01 






'Xi. 






CORRESPONDENCE. 

Albany, March 1, 1837. 
To THE Hon. Daniel D. Barnard, 

SIR, — Tlie Executive Committee of the ''Young Men's Association for Mutual 
Improvement in the City of Albany," have availed themselves of the earliest oppor- 
tunity to unite in a tender of their warmest thanks to you, for the very able, inter- 
esting and eloquent Lecture delivered by you before the Association last evening, 
on the Character and Services of the late James Madison. 

The Committee are confident that they are not less actuated by regard to the 
wishes of the public, and the interests of the Association, than by their own feel- 
ings when they most respectfully and earnestly solicit your compliance with the re- 
quest contained in the following resoUuian, which they have unanimously adopted. 
Resolved, That the thanks of the Association be presented to the Hon. DaiMEL 
D. Barnard for the very instructive and eloquent Lecture delivered by him before 
the Association last evening, on the Character and Services of the late James 
Madison; and that he be requested to furnish a copy for publication. 
With great respect. 

We have the honor to be, 

Sir, Your most obedient servants, 

John Davis, T. W. LockWood, 

John V. S. Hazard, Henry Russell, 
Robert L. Kearney, Jas. H. Prentice, 
C. W. Bender, Chas. T. Smyth, 

RoBT. H. Pruyn, Samuel Cauy, Jr., 

Dan'l Fry, Chas. M. Jenkins, 

A. 31. Stkong, Jacob Hochsirasser, 

Marshall Pepoon, John S. Goold, 
E. B. Season, G. Melville, 

Henry Q. Havvley, Wm. G. Deyermand. 



Albany, March 2d, 1837. 
Gentlemen, 

I do not feel myself at liberty to withhold from publication the Lecture which I 
had the iionor to deliver before your Association on Tuesday, after the strong and 
very flattering manner in which you have been pleased to solicit it. 

I pray you to accept my acknowledgments for the terms of kindness and courtesy 
employed in your communication; and allow me to add the expression of my sin- 
cere admiration for the Institution which you represent, and my earnest and confi- 
dent hope that its existence and its benefits may be perpetual. 

With great respect, 

Gentlemen, Your obd't serv't, 

D. D. Barnard. 
To John Davis, Esq., and others. 

Executive Committee, Sfc, 



LECTURE. 



The benefits which spring from the existence of a great 
and good man, to his country and kind, are only half bestow- 
ed in his Hfe-time. The rest are the purchase of his death. 
This event, by which the name and deeds of common men 
drop into obhvion, exalts and hallows a superior character, 
and gives him a presence and a power in the world which he 
never has, or can have, without it. In truth, his real and ef- 
fective existence, even on the earth, seems only to begin 
with his death. What precedes is, often times at least, little 
more than life in embryo ; life in a state of development ; 
life in effort to attain maturity; life half concealed and half 
revealed, half acknowledged and half denied, half trusted and 
half doubted ; an equivocal condition of being which death 
alone resolves and fixes. Having past that ordeal, he be- 
comes a reality; an object understood, and felt, and reveren- 
ced. He is permitted to occupy his true position ; he re- 
ceives credit for what he was and is; the age and the period 
become impressed with the wisdom and potency of his recor- 
ded words and acts ; he pervades the general mind with the 
influence of his name and his example ; and living in the 
multiplied and varied life of all his received opinions, and all 
his admired virtues, and in the body of his beneficent works, 
his existence becomes significant, and substantial, and effec- 
tive, beyond every thing which ever belongs to the physical 
condition of humanity. 

Mr. Madison was more fortunate certainly than most oth- 
ers in commanding largely the respect and homage of his fel- 
low-men even amid the coUisions and the strifes of active and 
exciting business in great affairs, and in out-living most of the 



rivalries and jealousies which a career of high public honor 
and ser\'ice never fails to generate. Ills services were ac- 
knowledged, and in some degree rewarded : and his opinions 
carried such weight with them as always belongs to the ema- 
nations of a master mind. Tlic Country saw, and to some 
extent the world saw. tliat they were deeply indebted to him. 
They were in the actual possession and enjoyment of bles- 
sings of his procuring. They could not wholly mistake the 
hand which Providence had employed to help them to his 
bounties. But after all, his was the common lot. The 
world builds no monuments to thcliving — but to the dead only. 
It was necessary that he should set the seal of his death to 
all he had thought and all he had wrought for us. It wasnc- 
ccssaiy that he should thus place his own character and his 
own opinions beyond the possibility of change, and beyond 
the reach of accident. It was necessary that he shouhl give 
us this last solemn pletige of his sincerity, of his own confi- 
dence in the propriety and value of his puldic course, and of 
his own conviction of the necessity and imj)ortancc of his 
public principles and his public measures. Dying, as he did, 
with all his faculties fresh about him, and yet, from the man- 
ner in which his term of being was protracted into a quiet 
old age, with abundant opportunity and occasion to review 
the past, under all the advantages of light from experience, 
and of light from the great future into which his vision was 
nowextenfled, there is something peculiarly solemn, and aflec- 
ting, and sacred, in the sanctions which are thus given to his 
opinions, and to all the varied etforls of his life for the good 
of his country, and of mankind. 

And here, my friends, are the benefits of his death. We 
are not called to mourn for that event. On the contraiy, 
while we do not forget that the sympathies of the nation are 
due for the more intimate and affecting ties which have been 
broken by it, we may yet rejoice — rejoice in the soberness of 
a chastened and conscious feeling of gratitude to God, as well 
for the graceful, becoming and appropriate death of this emi- 
nent man, as for his excellent and invaluable fife. The beau- 



tiful volume of his being is closed — it is written up, to the last 
syllable of its admired contents. We have it as it dropt from 
his dying hand, with the last touches, the delicate and exqui- 
site finish, of that faithful and practised hand upon it. Oh 
how full it is of the lessons of wisdom and of virtue ; so sub- 
lime and yet so simple ; so severe and yet so attractive; so 
uniform in its tenor and character and so wonderfully consis- 
tent throughout, and yet so simple and so various ; how mod- 
est and yet how resolved and firm in its tone at the com- 
mencement ; how sublime and commanding in its intermedi- 
ate passages ; and how surpassingly touching and eloquent in 
its close ! 

The limits of an occasion like the present will not allow me 
to dwell in detail on all the particulars of Mr. Madison's life 
and career ; and this is of the less consequence now, since 
they are already before the public, as far as they can well be, 
short of an extended and regular memoir, in the most attrac- 
tive and delightful forms.* I must confine myself chiefly to 
some of the more prominent portions of his history. 

What I desire, on this occasion, is, so to arrange and pre- 
sent the materials in hand as to shew, at least in the way of a 
just and necessary inference, by the instance and example of 
Mr. Madison, what are, and ought to be, the true character- 
istics of an American statesman — to shew, especially to the 
young men of this Association, what a public man, in this 
country, should be, and what he may be, and when, and 
when only, he is entitled to receive, and may expect to re- 
ceive, the calm approving judgment of the world. 

James Madison was descended from a highly respectable 
and opulent family in Virginia. He was born on the 5th of 
March, 1751, (O. S.) in King George County, though his pa- 
ternal home, as well as his own through life, was in Orange 
County. At twelve years of age he was sent to a public school, 
but he finished his preparatory course under the instructions 
of a private tutor, in his father's house. It fell to the honor 
of New Jersey to furnish him with his collegiate education. 



Mr. Adams' Eulogy on Mr. Madison, and that by Gov. Barbour. 



8 

After two years only spent at Nassau Hall, he received his 
first literary degree. This was in 1771. He was now twen- 
ty ; and he returned to his home as much a student and pupil 
as he had left it. For four years, he devoted himself to the 
great work of self-instruction, and self-discipline. In this 
period he examined tlio foundations of legal science, 
and he studied and mastered the secrets which belong to the 
histor>' of great nations and of great men. It was at this 
time, beyond doubt, that he formed his own character, and 
prepared the basis on which his future greatness was built. 
In the Spring of 1773, he entered for the first time on public 
employment. In nearly all the Colonics, even at that early 
pericjd, the authority of the old government establishments, 
still in furm preserved, was little relished and less regarded. 
By a sim[)le process, almost without seeming to do so, the 
people resumed the power of government, to a large extent, 
and excrcis.Ml it through their "Conmiittecs of Public Safe- 
ty." Mr. M.vnisoN was a member of the body, constituted 
under that name, for his native county. Of this committee 
his father was the chairman. At the very first meeting, an 
occasion presented itself, which demanded the employment 
of his pen ; nor did he allow the occasion to pass, without 
makinfj public the solemn declaration and opinion of that 
body, that Virginia, and every other Colony, must and would 
make common cause with Massachusetts, in the war which 
had already begun its desolations in her borders. 

The next year Mr. Madison, being then twenty-five years 
of age, appeared as a member of the State Convention of 
Virginia — a body of men who erected monuments to them- 
selves which can never perish — and he was a distinguished ac- 
tor in all its great achievements. He participated in the act by 
which their delegates in Congress were instructed, so early 
as the 15th of May, to move the measure of Independence. 
He was a member of the Committee that prepared and re- 
ported the Declaration of Rights which was adopted by the 
Convention on the 12th of June. And the Constitution of 
the State, formed on the basis of that Declaration, and adopt- 



9 

ed on the 29th of the same month — the first example of a 
written Constitution of government, emanating from the peo- 
ple as the true source of power — that Constitution, though 
not originally drafted by him, yet passed through his hands 
and received his corrections and emendations before it was 
presented to the Convention. 

The next year (1777) on the meeting of the new Legisla- 
ture, he was elected a member of the Council of State, and 
he continued in the discharge of the delicate and responsible 
duties of that office till the close of the year 1779, when the 
scene of his public labors was about to be changed. He was 
elected to the Congress of the Confederated States, and he 
took his seat in that body in March 1780. The articles of 
Confederation did not allow him to serve the country contin- 
uously in that capacity, longer than until November 1783. 
While in that station, he saw the war of the Revolution out, 
peace restored, and independence established. He was a 
leading and conspicuous man in all that related to the prose- 
cution of the war while it lasted, so far as measures for 
its prosecution depended on Congress, and in whatever could 
promote and ensure its successful and honorable termination. 
With the peace came a new state of things. The States felt 
themselves to be independent, each for itself; and they chose 
to manifest and maintain their individual independence, by 
neglecting the just requisitions of Congress, and by refusing 
to vest it with new and indispensablij powers. In truth, 
when the Americans had conquered independence and a peace, 
they seemed no longerto be a nation. A people cannot claim 
to be a nation which is without the means of raising a reve- 
nue for its own support, and without the means of providing 
for the payment of the public debt, and the establishment of 
public credit, and without the means of meeting and dis- 
charging its treaty obligations. On this subject, before his 
term expired, Mr. Madison prepared an address which Con- 
gress transmitted to the States. It was a mighty effort, full 
of argument, and wisdom, and strength, and power, and per- 
suasion, and terror — and it was not wholly in vain. It did 

2 



10 

not induce the States to yield the required powers to the Con- 
federation. But, as a lasi eftbrt on that point, it prepared the 
minds of thinking men throughout the country, to turn their 
attention to the necessity of something better than the Con- 
federation. On this high matter it is evident, the thoughts 
of Mr. Madison had ah-oady begun to settle. 

From Congress Mr. Madison passed into the I^egislature 
of Virginia — only, however, to await the period when, his 
disqualification being removed, he should be returned again 
to Congress. But before this latter event took place, for he 
resumed his seat in Congress in Ftbruary, 1787, he with oth- 
ers had succeeded in setting measures on foot which were des- 
tined in their progress, ver}' soon to extinguish the Confedera- 
tion itself, and set up a Constitutional Cuvernment in its place. 
This, it seems to me, was the great and crowning service ren- 
dered by Mr. Madiso.n to his country. To this service he de- 
voted himself: yet he did not enter on it rashly — he did not 
rush with inconsiderate and fatal haste on the prejudices and 
obstacles which stood in his way — but he never lost sight of 
his object. 

When he first entered the Legislature of Virginia, the 
times were not yet quite ripe for any movement towards his 
great purpose : and other objects for a while demanded his 
attention. The great jirinciple of Religious Liberty was in 
danger, and required to be established, in the Commonwealth; 
and it was established by his efforts and influence. A most 
embarrassing and nearly fatal difficulty, relating to the dispo- 
sal of the Public Lands, required to be adjusted ; and it was 
adjusted under his lead. The Statute I^aws of the Slate, re- 
quired to be revised throughout, and made to square with the 
new principles and new forms which had been introduced into 
the government ; and the revision was mainly effected by 
him. 

But at length, the time came to move in that great matter, 
which viially concerned the whole countiy. Mr. Madison 
first brought forward a Resolution to instruct the Delegates 
from Virginia in Congress, to agitate again, in that body, the 



11 

subject of the enlargement of its powers. This was in No- 
vember 1785. The Resohition, after having passed the House 
of Delegates, was re-considered, and there, suffered to sleep. 
It served the purpose of calling attention in that quarter 
anew, to the fatal inadequacy of the Confederation. In Jan- 
uary 1786, on the suggestion of Mr. Madison, it was propo- 
sed to constitute a distinct body, consisting of Commissioners 
from the several States, to consider the trade of the United 
States, and the means of establishing a uniform system of 
commercial regulations. This measure was adopted, and Vir- 
ginia appointed her Commissioners, of whom, Mr. Madison 
was one. 

Under this proposition, Commissioners from five of the 
States, met at Annapolis, on the 11th of September, 1786. 
The Convention dissolved itself on the 14th of the same 
month, having first adopted a report, drawn by Mr. Madison, 
£md which was transmitted to each of the States and to Con- 
gress, setting forth the reasons of the Convention, for declin- 
ing to proceed to business, and earnestly recommending the 
appointment of new Delegates, with enlarged and more ample 
powers, to meet at Philadelphia, on the second Monday of 
the following May. This Report was promptly responded to, 
by Congress, and on its recommendation, Delegates were ap- 
pointed by the States, who met in Convention, at Philadel- 
phia, and proceeded to their great work, on the 25th of May, 
1787. 

Of this Convention, Mr. Madison was a member. With 
him, more than with any other man, it originated. To him, 
as much as to any man, are the country and the world in- 
debted for the successful issue of its deliberations. It was 
right that he should at last survive every man who had helped 
to compose it. I shall not undertake to say a word in honor 
of this Convention. It is stamped with an unapproachable 
excellence and greatness, which mock at commendation and 
praise. The Constitution, having been first revised in its lan- 
guage, and its parts arranged into order and harmony, by a 
Committee, of which, Mr. Madison was one, was finally re- 



19 

ported, and became the act of the Convention on the 17th of 
September, 1787. 

But the most difficult part of the achievement, -which ]Mr. 
Madison and liis compatriots had taken in hand, rcniaiucd to 
be accomplished. They liad undertaken to bring tlic peoples 
of thirteen independent sovereignties, for so at least they es- 
teemed themselves to be, to consent to form themselves into 
one people, under one government. They had now framed 
the instrument \vhich, being adopted and ratified, was to ef- 
fect this mighty change; and it remained that they must pre- 
sent themselves before the people, to gain if possible, that free 
acceptance and consent, without which, they had labored up 
to the present moment in vain. They had built the ark, and 
it remained to be seen, whether the people would enter it. 
Her3 was an experiment to be tried, such as had never been 
attempted before, and in its success a moral spectacle was 
exhibited, such as hitherto, the world had never witnessed, 
where the agents and actors were merely human. 

The common Government nf England had been thrown off, 
and the States were free. The mass of the people in the 
States rejoiced in this freedom, not only because ihcy were 
relieved from the actual oppressions of the British govern- 
ment, but because they felt themselves, to a certain extent, 
relieved from all government. It was a prevalent impression 
undoubtedly — not to call it a sentiment — that every species of 
foreign power was a species of tyranny, and they regarded 
every sort of authority as foreign, which did not manifestly 
originate within the territorial limits of the State where it was 
exercised. The very idea of Liberty — of that Liberty for 
which they had toiled and fought, and which they now wor- 
shipped — consisted mainly, perhaps, certainly in part, in the 
notion of an entire personal exemption from tiio fact and the 
possibility of all extraneous control. Whatever they permit- 
ted of government over them in any form, was yet something 
with which a stranger must not intermeddle. The govern- 
ment must be within themselves and of themselves. Even 
the Confederation had become an object of jealousy, or of 



13 

contempt. From the moment that the common danger which, 
by surrounding them on every side, had driven them into 
something hke union, had compelled them to range themselves 
shoulder to shoulder and stand close, in order to make their 
resistance effectual — from the moment that common impul- 
sion was suspended — was no longer felt — the palpable dispo- 
sition was manifested in various quarters, to count the Confe- 
deration as an agency that had served its purpose ; at least 
that it should not be resuscitated by any new grant of power, 
but be suffered to languish and die, if die it would, of its own 
inherent and constitutional debility. 

Now it was communities of men, holding sentinients and 
indulgino: feelinos like these, to whom the Constitution of the 
Convention at Philadelphia, was to be presented for accep- 
tance and ratification. This Constitution was framed to act 
directly on the individuals composing these communities, and 
it was framed to make the Government a strong and effi- 
cient one ; a Government, moreover, which was to interfere 
in an eminent degree with the authority of the state govern- 
ments themselves. This government was to possess, by 
transfer, the very attributes which, while they remained with 
the States, were chiefly, if not alone, essential to their sove- 
reignty. To this extent, at least, the sovereignty of tlie States 
was to be yielded up ; and to this extent was the power over 
the subjects of that sovereignty to be transferred to another 
and a distant government — one, too, which was contemplated 
to be so completely foreign to every State, that the very seat 
of its power — the place of its visible presence — was to be 
isolated from the territory of all the States ; for it was to pos- 
sess an absolute and exclusive jurisdiction, for this purpose 
over a District of ten miles square. The Constitution and 
laws of tills government were to be supreme over all other 
constitutions and laws ; and having the power to make laws, 
it was to have the power, both to interpret and to enforce 
them. It was to have power to impose taxes, and power to 
regulate commerce, and power to coin money, and power to 
define and punish crimes, and power to form treaties and al- 



14 

liancc?. and power to make war and conclude peace — power, 
in short, and in some cases exclusive power, over the proper- 
ty, and the persons, and the lives of all who should become 
subject to its authority — power to prescribe and power to 
compel, power to judge and power to execute. 

And besides ; IJiis was, indeed, to be a representative and 
republican government ; but while the people of one Slate and 
the State itself were to be represented in it, yet so were the 
people of every other State,and all the other States themselves, 
to be also, and equally represented in it. And it miii;ht hap- 
pen, to say the least, that one .section of the Union would 
make laws for another section, and that one State, and the 
people of that State, would be subjected to the operation of 
measures, touching the very highest interests, which not only 
were not the measures of their own immediate representa- 
tives, but which those representatives had op()Osed, and against 
which. they had protested — a possible evil, moreover, this, 
which was not likely to be made lighter or less liable to hap- 
pen, in consequence of the inherent and almost illimitable 
capal)ility of extension and expansion which the government 
was to possess. 

Undersuch circumstances, my friends, the men of the Con- 
stitution brought forward their system. They put the Con- 
stitution boldly into every man's hand, and asked him to ac- 
cept of its provisions. They did not disguise its operation 
and effect. It was to impose great lestraints on personal lib- 
erty. It was to place large powers over property, and per- 
son, and life, in the hands of those who should exercise its 
functions — and possibly, at times, in the hands of persons who 
would be strangers to the individuals, and the interests aflbct- 
ed, as distant in feeling and sympathy, as they might be in 
habitati(jn. Still they fearlessly asked the people to accept 
it. It demanded the free surrender of privileges and immu- 
nities which were held in more than common estimation ; 
yet they did not hesitate to ask the people to put their hands 
to the act of cession. It was a garment purposely fitted, when 
once assumed, to operate largely in restraint of human ac- 



15 

tion ; and they insisted that the people should put it on.— 
They came to the people with the language of truth, and of 
sincerity, and of earnest and high appeal. Government is a 
restraint on human freedom, but governments are necessary 
things. All time and all experience have established this one 
universal truth at least ; — That men must consent to govern 
themselves, or they must submit to be governed. Wherever, 
and whenever they prove themselves unfit, unable, or unwil- 
ling to establish and conduct their own government, a gov- 
ernment of power, established and conducted for them, and 
without their agency or consent, follows of necessary conse- 
quence. Nor was it possible for the people of America to 
rest on their Stale governments alone. There never had been 
a time when the States individually w^ere nations. From the 
beginning, there had been but one American nation, and that 
was composed of all the States. This was the attitude in 
which they had placed them.-elves before other nations, and 
before the world. In the Convention at Philadelphia, Mr. 
Madison had stood up explicitly to deny that the States had 
ever possessed the essential rights of sovereignty. He affirm- 
ed that these rights were always vested in Congress. And 
this sentiment was responded to by Mr. Gerry. " The 
States," said he, "were never independent — they had only 
corporate rights."* 

But whatever may be thought of these opinions, there could 
be no disputing the fact, that the States, in their united capa- 
city, and with Congress as the organ of their engagements, 
had entered into national obhgations, of the most solemn cha- 
racter, from which they could not, with honor or with safety, 
attempt to relieve themselves either by breaking up the 
Union, or by preserving it in a condition of utter incapacity to 
meet the national exigencies. Do what they would the na- 
tional debt at least must be paid, and the national treaties ob- 
served and performed. And how was even so much to be ac- 
complislied ? The Confederation was universally acknowledg- 

* Secret Proceedings of the Federal Convention, 



16 

edtobca failure. It was not only afailure, in fact, and for the 
present, but it was an adjudged and predestined failure, and 
a failure focvcr. There was no disposition to make it ade- 
quate for national purposes, and if there had been, it was not 
possible to compass such an object by building on such a foun- 
dation. 

It was evident, then, that the crisis had arrived. It must 
now be the Constitution or nothing, " A nation," exclaimed 
Publius, "a nation without a national government, is an aw- 
ful spectacle."* And to this point did the men of the Con- 
stitution especially direct their attention, in arguing this great 
cause before the people. The Constitution must be adopted, 
or there was no national government, and no nation. And 
the choice lay between voluntary subnussion to self-im()osed 
and salutary authority, on the one hand, and the hazards of 
anarchy, civil commotion, foreign aggression, and probably 
at last, a military despotism on the other. 

The Constitution was to be con-^idercd by Conventions of 
delegates from the people in each State, and by them accept- 
ed or rejected ; and if nine States accepted it, the government 
was to go into operation. Previous to the meeting of these 
Conventions, and while the subject was pending before the 
people at large, an arrangement was entered into between 
•these individuals, to make one great, united and systematic 
effort, by exposition, and argument and appeal, to subdue the 
public mind into dispositions favorable to the adoption of the 
Constitution. Of these persons Mr. Madison was one ; the 
others were Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Jay. The publication 
was made in numbers in the city of New- York, with the sig- 
nature of Publius. There were eighty-five papers in all, and 
they occupy together, in a closely printed octavo volume, as 
now collected, nearly four hundred and fifty pages. They 
have long since passed into the form of an American classic ; 
and they will hold a high place among the standard works of 
this country and age, as long as either the integrity or the 
memory of the Constitution shall endure. 

* Federolist. 



17 

The difficulties of the task which these men took on them- 
selves, have already been alluded to ; and nobody more clear- 
ly saw and estimated these difficulties than they did. It was 
a case for hope ; a case for some confidence, but more misgiv- 
ing. It was just the case to bring out the energy and the 
courage of lofty and noble minds, amid the prevalent despon- 
dency and gloom, with which the timid and the weak would 
be smitten down. The authors of the Federalist entered the 
lists resolved to win, but not without a full knowledge of the 
mighty obstacles which stood in the way of their success. 
In one of the numbers, written by Mr. Madison, there is a 
very curious catalogue of the objections which were current 
in the country against the Constitution. 

" This one," says he, "tells us, that the proposed Constitution 
ought to be rejected, because it is not a Confederation of the 
States, but a government over individuals. Another admits 
that it ought to be a government over individuals to a certain 
extent, but by no means to the extent proposed. A third does 
not object to the government over individuals, or to the extent 
proposed, but to the want of a bill of rights. A fourth con- 
curs in the absolute necessity of a bill of rights, but contends 
that it ought to be declaratory, not of the personal rights of 
individuals, but of the rights reserved to the States in their po- 
litical capacity. A fifth is of opinion that a bill of rights of 
any sort would be superfluous and misplaced, and that the 
plan would be unexceptionable, but for the fatal power of 
regulating the times and places of election. An objector in 
a large State exclaims loudly against the unseasonable equality 
of representation in the Senate. An objector in a small State 
is equally loud against the dangerous inequality in the House 
of Representatives. From this quarter we are alarmed with 
the amazing expense from the number of persons who are 
to administer the new government. From another quarter, 
and sometimes from the same quarter, on another occasion, 
the cry is, that the Congress will be but a shadow of a repre- 
sentation, and that the government would be far less objection- 
able, if the number and the expense were doubled. A pa- 

3 



18 

triot in a State that does not import or export, discerns insu- 
perable objections against the power of direct taxation. The 
patriotic adversary in a State of great exports and imports, 
is not less dissatisfied, that the whole burthen of taxes may 
be thrown on consum[jtion. This poHtician discovers in the 
Constitution a direct and irrcsistable tendency to monarchy ; 
that is e<jually sure that it will end in aristocracy. Another 
is puzzled to say wiiirh of tiicsc shapes it will ultimately as- 
sume, but sees clearly it must bo one or other of them ; whilst 
a fourth is not wanting, who, with no less confidence affirms, 
that the Constitution is so far from having a bias towards ei- 
ther of these dangers, tiiat the weight on that side will not be 
sufficient to keep it upright and firm against its opposite pro- 
pensities. AN'ith another class of adversaries to the Constitu- 
tion, the language is, that the legislative, executive and judi- 
ciary departments, arc intermixed in such a manner, as to 
contradict all the ideas of regular government, and all the re- 
quisite precautions in favor of liberty. Wliijst this objection 
circulates in vague and general expressions, there are not a 
few who lend their sanction to it. Let each one come for- 
ward with his particular explanation, and scarcely any two 
are exactly agreed on the subject. In the eyes of one the 
junction of the Senate with the President, in the responsible 
function of appointing to offices, instead of vesting this Exe- 
cutive power in the Executive alone, is the vicious part of the 
organization. To another, the exclusion of the House of 
Representatives, whose numbers alone could be a due securi- 
ty against corruption and partiality, in the exercise of such a 
power, is equally obnoxious. With another the admission of 
the President into any share of a power, which must ever be 
a dangerous engine in the hands of the Executive Magistrate, 
is an unpardonable violation of the maxims of republican 
jealousy. No part of the arrangement, according to some, is 
more madmisable than the trial of impeachments by the Sen- 
ate, which is alternately a member both of the legislative and 
executive departments, when this power so evidently belonged 
to the judiciary department. We concur fully, reply others. 



19 

in the objection to this part of the plan, but we can never 
agree that a reference of impeachments to the judiciary au- 
thority, would be an amendment of the error; our principal 
dislike to the organization arises from the extensive powers al- 
ready lodged in that department. Even among the most zeal- 
ous patrons of a council of slate, the most irreconcileable va- 
riance is discovered, concerning the mode in which it ought 
to be constituted. The demand of one gentleman is that the 
council should consist of a small number, to be appointed by 
the most numerous branch of the Legislature. Another would 
prefer a larger number, and considers it as a fundamental con- 
dition, that the appointment should be made by the Pi'esident 
himself!" 

It is impossible to read this extract, and observe the a- 
mount of opposition which it indicates, and the almost endless 
variety of shapes that opposition assumed, without being led 
to regard the success of the Constitution, in spite of it all, as 
one of the most wonderful occurrences of any age of the 
world. In the very close of the labors of this noble triumvi- 
rate, in this form, when they came to publish the last number 
of these remarkable papers, and after they had seen, in the 
course of the progress of their work, the favorable decision of 
no less than seven States — even then, though their courage 
and their zeal were unabated, still it would seem, they did not 
dare to indulge, in any sanguine hopes, of a favorable result. 
Says the author of this last number, " The establishment of a 
Constitution, in time of profound peace, by the voluntary con- 
sent of a whole people, is a prodigy, to the completion of 
which I look forward with trembling anxiety." 

But these men had now done all which argument, and ex- 
position, and persuasion could do, before the body of the peo- 
ple. And they passed almost directly from this labor, into the 
Conventions of their respective States. 

When the Convention of Virginia met, which was on the 2d 
of June, 1788, the Constitution hadbeen accepted by the peo- 
ple of eight States ; and it seemed now to rest with that Con- 
vention whether the people of a ninth State should or should 



3d 

not, be added to the number, and so whether the new govern- 
ment should or should not, go into operation. fSuch at least, 
was the firm conviction of both friends and enemies ; and 
the respective parties met in the Convention, each and equal- 
ly resolved to regard this as the last field of encounter — the 
spot on which the issue of the whole war was to be decided 
and declared — and where the last and fiercest and highest en- 
ergies of the combatants were to be expended. If the Consti- 
tution should be rejected here, it was well supposed, consider- 
ing the elevated standing and the high moral power of Virgi- 
nia among the confederate States, that its adoption would bo 
forever defeated. It did, indeed, so happen, in tiic event, that 
New-Hampshire had given a favorable decision, five days be- 
fore the result was declared in the Convention of Virginia. — 
But this fact was unknown to the Virginia delegates, at the 
period when they came to a final vote ; and from the com- 
mencement of the session to the close, the contest was carried 
on, with the feeling, that not the fate of the State only, but 
the fate of the Constitution and the Union, probably depend- 
ed on the issue. 

Under the circumstances, the Virginia Convention was one 
of the sublimest theatres of human action which has ever been 
presented to the contemplation of the world in the tide of 
time. If the Convention of 1787 at Philadelphia, had failed, 
in the purpose of its meeting, the project of uniting this great 
people under one Constitutional Government, would never 
have been presented in a definite and tangible form. And 
when it had happily prepared an instrument acceptable to it- 
self, it had no more power than to commend it to the favor of 
the country. But the instrument of Union was now before 
the people ; in framing it, it had been the result of such com- 
promises and concessions, as never could occur again, and the 
question, therefore, was clearly between this instrument and 
none ; it had now been adopted by eight States, and it de- 
manded to be adopted by a ninth to give it any, the least, vi- 
tality or power. It seemed, for the time being, to devolve 



21 

exclusively on the Virginia Convention, to decide, forever, thv. 
awful question of acceptance or rejection. 

And if the spectacle afforded by this Convention was grand 
and imposing, on account of the magnitude of the subject in 
hand, and the unspeakable importance of the consequences 
which seemed to depend on the issue of its dehberations, it 
was not less grand and imposing in the materials of its com- 
position. There was there an array of great names, filling 
the place where they were assembled, with a splendor and 
dignity, such as the presence of illustrious persons can alone 
supply. Patrick Henry, and George Mason, and James 
Monroe, and William Grayson, were there on the side of op- 
position ; and on the side of the Constitution stood James 
Madison, and Edmund Randolph, and Edmund Pendleton, 
and John Marshall, and George Nicholas, and Henry Lee — 
names these, my friends, the least of which gives the heart of 
an American a prouder swell when he contemplates it as that 
of a fellow countryman. 

I shall not dwell on the proceedings of this Convention. 
Whatever is splendid in sentiment and diction ; whatever is 
brilliant in display ; whatever is keen in sarcasm ; whatever 
is terrible in invective ; whatever is resistless in the strong 
tide of manly eloquence ; whatever is searching, and lucid, 
and powerful, and commanding in the exhibition of fact, and 
truth, and argument, were heard and witnessed in the pro- 
gress of the debates. The debates were opened by Mr. Nicho- 
las in favor of the Constitution. Mr. Henry followed in op- 
position. Gov. Randolph then took the floor in reply. This 
brought out Mr. Mason on the other side. And now it was 
Mr. Madison's turn. He threw himself into the midst of the 
conflict. He was calm, never loud, undaunted, firm ; modest, 
yet resolved and confident, because conscious of power and 
conscious of right. Wherever the enemy was weak he made 
demonstrations, and where he was strongest, he made him 
feel that he was weak. Having driven him back to his tren- 
ches, disarmed and discomfited, he seemed in conclusion, 
with an air of modest chivalry, to invite the adversary, if he 



22 

had better steel in reserve, to come and try its temper also on 
his helmet and shield. For twenty days together, day by 
day, the debates were renewed and continued ; and on the 
2Gth of June the triumph was complete. A majority of eight, 
voices, though of eight voices only, out of one hundred and 
sixty-eight delegates, were found to declare in favor of the 
Constitution. 

The Constitution having been adopted, the next thing to be 
done was to put the new government into operation. Presi- 
dent Washington was inaugurated, and Congress met for the 
despatch of i)usiness, in the spring of 1781). Of this Con- 
gress, Mr. M.\i>is.-N was a member; and h«^ continued to servo 
his country in this capacity, down to the close of Gen. Wash- 
ington's administration, when he withdrew for a time from all 
ofllcial relations to the general government. 

It is probable that few among the young men of our coun- 
try, have any adecjuate idea of the amount of talent, and 
knowledge, and labor, which was recjuired and expended in 
the organization of the government of the United States un- 
der the new Constitution. This instrument rather authorized 
the creation of a government, than actually created one. It 
authorized the exercise of powers, and indicated in general 
terms, how those powers should be distributed. But it left 
the organization of the various departments, with the num- 
ber of their functionaries, and the detail of their respective 
duties, very much to the discretion of Congress. Several 
executive departments, and the post-office department, were 
to be created and regulated. A judiciary system was to be 
digested and established. A revenue system was to be devis- 
ed for the support of government and public credit. Trade 
and commerce, and navigation were to be regulated. The 
salaries and pay of the various officers of government were 
to be settled and fixed. A permanent seat of government 
was to be selected and prepared. A plan for organizing and 
arming the militia was to be contrived and adopted. But it 
would be endless to enumerate. It demanded honest hearts 
and skilful hands to devise, and set in motion, the compli- 



23 

cated and delicate machinery of such a government as this. 
And happily such hearts and hands were found, and among 
the number, Mr. Madison was, by no means, the least con- 
spicuous or the least efficient. 

It could not well have happened otherwise than that occa- 
sions should early arise, in which, wide differences of opin- 
ion both in regard to the policy, and in regard to the consti- 
tutional principles of the Administration, should be entertain- 
ed and expressed. With respect to some of these differences, 
and disputes, the truth of history will unquestionably pro- 
nounce that, if they did not originate in private jealousies and 
in views of personal ambition, they were at least greatly aggra- 
vated by such causes. And it undoubtedly happened in rela- 
tion to all of them, that different individuals of great emi- 
nence took part in them, on the same side, who were prompt- 
ed and impelled by very different motives and views ; in short, 
that then, as now and always, persons might be found acting 
together on questions of great public interest, and in zeal- 
ous hostility to other men on the same questions, one of whom 
might be guided by an honest conviction of public duty, while 
the other should be moved by no thought or passion above the 
level of a sordid or a selfish one. 

It is well known that Mr. Madison, in some of the most 
important measures of Gen. Washington's administration, 
was found in the ranks of the opposition ; and that he contin- 
ued on the side of opposition, though no longer standing in any 
official relation to the government, throughout the administra- 
tion of its affairs by President Washington's immediate suc- 
cessor. I should not have performed the duty assigned me 
on this occasion, in any degree to my own approval, if 1 had 
omitted to scrutinize with much care this interesting portion 
of Mr. Madison's history. Having done so, however, the 
limits of the occasion will allow me to offer little more than 
the clear convictions of my mind, as the result of my exam- 
ination and reflections ; and these convictions are, that Mr. 
Madison was here, and now, as elsewhere, and everywhere, 
and at all times, the same disinterested incorruptible, and 



24 

magnauiinous Iriend of his countiy, which tlic promise of his 
previous hfe and sei"vices had led us to expect to find him. 

After the Constitution had been adopted, and the govern- 
ment had been put into successful operation, the position of 
Mr. ]Mai)iso.\ before the American people, like that of every 
other man similarly situated, was changed in one important 
particular. Before that period, there was scarcely a possibil- 
ity of regarding him as less than a Statesman, devoting him- 
self with unalloyed feelings of patriotism to his country's 
good ; but aft«r that time, thougli unchanged in one sentiment 
or feeling of devotion to iiis country, yet lie encountered the 
chance of being regarded as a politician, swayed, if not 
governed, by private resentments or private partialities, or 
harboring, perhaps, thoughts of self-exaltation and advance- 
ment. In estimating the purity of his public course, at the 
perio<l we now speak of, it must not be forgotten that he was 
called to fill the high office of Secretary of State, when Mr. 
Jetferson came into power, on the defeat of Mr. Adams, and 
that he succeeded the former gentleman in the Presidential 
office ; to which must be added, also, the fact that the person- 
al relations between him and Mr. Jetferson, had long been 
those of confidence and friendship. At the same time, it 
should be remarked, that, while these facts may furnish a just 
occasion for a jealous scrutiny into his conduct and motives, 
it would be more than puerile, it would be contemptible, to 
consider them, of themselves, as proving any thing. 

What is claimed for Mii. Madison, and what for myself, 
I believe to be righteously due to him, is that, in all his pub- 
lic course during the administrations of the first two Presi- 
dents of the United States, though he acted much in opposi- 
tion, it was not from any restless desire of putting down one 
administration in order to set up another; nor from any sec- 
tional predilections or any State pride, nor from any factious 
or fault-finding disposition ; nor because he was disaftccted 
towards some individuals and well affected towards others ; 
nor because he hated one foreign country and loved another ; 
nor because he wished to serve his friend, or wished to serve 



25 



himself — nor was it from any other cause or motive whatevef, 
than that he had received, into a good and honest heart, after 
much anxious dehberation, the solemn conviction, that this 
course of service was demanded of him by every obligation of 
honor, of faith, and of duty to his country. 

The opposition both in and out of Congress, very early 
began to put on the form of a regular, systematic, party 
organization, with one or more recognized and acknowledged 
chiefs and leaders ; and as one party never exists without 
another to antagonize it, the support of the administration 
assumed also to a considerable extent, a party type and cha- 
racter. It is the high praise of Mr. Madison, that, though his 
intimate and confidentiar friend was the chosen head of the 
opposition in the Union, at least for the South, yet, in his own 
public conduct, he seems never to have failed scrupulously to 
distinguish between the spirit of party, and the spirit of patri- 
otism. That the opinions of Mr. Jefferson, whose sagacity 
was almost unequalled, had great weight with him, must 
undoubtedly have been true : but there are not wanting very 
notable instances — cases in which the sentiments and projec- 
ted measures of his friend may be supposed to have commen- 
ded themselves, in an especial manner, to his favorable re- 
gard — but in which the wisdom and honesty of his great 
mind led him to adopt views of his own, other, and distinct, 
or greatly modified views, and such as were always beautiful- 
ly characteristic of himself, and of the principles by which 
his life was governed. 

The earliest occasion for opposition on the part of Mr. 
Madison, was presented by a measure of the administration 
which originated with Mr. Hamilton, who was then at the 
head of the Treasury. It was proposed to establish a Nation- 
al Bank ; and Mr. Madison interposed an uncompromizing 
hostility to the project, on the ground of a want of constitu- 
tional power. And it is proper here to remark that he never 
yielded his opinion ; although, afterwards, when President 
of the United States, he did assent to a Bill, passed by Con- 
gress, for the establishment of such a Corporation, on grounds 

4 



S4 

however perfectly distinct, and, at the same time, perfectly 
consistent with his denial of an original constitutional authori- 
ty for that purpose. He believed that he was bound to give 
his executive sanction to the Bank Charter in 1817, in defer- 
ence and respect to " the obligations <lerived from a course 
of precedents amounting to the requisite evidence of the 
national judgment and intention."* 

It was not long before Mn. Madison, was again brought 
into sharp, and, in this instance, violent collision with his for- 
mer associate Mr. Hamilton, on a question which involved 
the interpretation of the Constitution. France was just now 
revolutionized, the monarchy abolished, the king beheaded, 
and a republic proclaimed. Europe was involved in war, 
and France seemed resolved that in this contest there should 
be no neutrals any where, either on her own or on this side 
of the Atlantic. It was not, however, then, nor has it ever 
since been supposed; by the considerate portion of the com- 
munity, to be the interest or policy of this country to involve 
itself, without some imperative cause affecting its own rights 
or its own security, in the wars of any foreign nations whatev- 
er, and least ot all in the wars of Europe. Before the arrival 
in this country of Mr. Genet, the minister of the National 
Convention of France, President Washington, with the unan- 
imous approbation of his Cabinet, Mr. Jefl'erson being one, 
had issued his proclamation to the people of the United 
States, usually known as the Proclamation of Neutrality. 

The cause of republican liberty was very naturally deemed 
by a considerable portion of the people of this country, just 
emerged Irom their own triumphant revolution, to I)e identi- 
cal with the cause of republican and revolutionary France ; 
and this impression, which, in truth, was very prevalent, na- 
turally led to the apprehension, on the part of the administra- 
tion, that individual citizens, perhaps in combination and in 
large numbers, might be betrayed, by their own enthusiasm, 
into acts inconsistent with the equal duty which the country 
owed to all the belligerents, and endangering those relations 

* Mr. Madiion's letter to Mr. Ingersoll, of June 23. 1631. 



27 

of peace which it was its highest interest to presei've. The 
proclamation then had for its object, to remind the citizens, 
that the United States were at peace with all the powers of 
Europe, and that so long as the relations of peace continued, 
the laws of that relation, and the duties of strict neutrahty, 
were of paramount obligation, and must not be violated. 

To this extent, and with this object, the act of the Presi- 
dent, in issuing his proclamation, could not well have been 
called in question, for the want of constitutional authority. — 
He is expressly required '* to take care that the laws be faith- 
fully executed." But the intemperate zeal of the times, led to 
the most fierce and undiscriminating denunciation of the meas- 
ure. The right to issue the proclamation at all, and for any 
purpose, was stoutly and stubbornly denied. And as the 
heated views of one party always tend to fire up the opinions 
and passions of its antagonist party, so it happened in the 
present case ; and the proclamation came to be defended be- 
fore the public on principles quite as untenable and reprehen- 
sible, as those which had been employed in the attacks that 
had been made upon it. 

After the newspapers of the day had exhausted some argu- 
ment and much epithet on the subject, Mr. Hamilton deemed 
it necessary to give to the public his exposition of the mean- 
ing of the proclamation, and the grounds on which he thought 
it could be defended. This he did in several papers with the 
signature of Pacificus. In his view the proclamation rose in- 
to higher importance — and assumed an attitude of loftier pre- 
tension than others, who as well as himself, had advised and 
supported it, had been used to assign to it. The paper did 
not, on the face of it, at least in terms it did not, purport to 
resolve the important question whether the United States 
were bound by any treaty stipulation, if called upon, to take 
part with or against any nation now engaged in war. The 
United States were under obligation, by treaty, to secure to 
France all her possessions in America against all other pow- 
ers ; and Mr. Hamilton chose to construe the proclamation 
as manifesting the sense of the government, though the act of 



28 

the President only, that the United Stales were not bound, 
under the circumstances, to take up arms in execution of the 
guaranty. 

It is easy to see if such was the purport of that paper, tliat 
the President had unflcrtaken alone to settle the highest ques- 
tion about which the sovereign power of a nation is ever 
called to act — that of peace or war ; a power moreover which 
the Constitution, whenever war was to be declared, had 
expressly confided to Congress. The exercise of such a pow- 
er by the President, ot course demanded a bold exposition of 
the Constitution to justify it. Mr. Hamilton found the requi- 
site authority by a very summary argument. The office of 
President, he thougiit, was the constitutional fountain of all 
executive authority, with such cxccplions and reservations 
only as are expressed in the instniment. The power to 
make war, is in its nature an executive power. All provi- 
sions in derogation of the executive riglit aro to be construed 
strictly ; and. in the present case, the restrictions on the exec- 
utive authority are not suthcient to prevent the President 
from declaring, as the sense of the government and nation, 
that the United States are not bound, by its treaty engage- 
ments, to guaranty to France her possessions in America by 
arming against the powers with whom she is now in conflict 
— in other words, the Presi(ii3nt may determine, in this 
instance at least, the question of peace or war. It is true he 
determined in favor of peace, but by the same authority he 
micht have determined in favor of war. 

But these were not the doctrines of that Constitution which 
Mu. jMadison had labored to establish ; and he felt impelled 
to throw himself in the way, between them and the country 
to which they were addressed. He came before the public 
in several Letters, with the signature of Ilelvidius, in which, 
without abating one particle of his accustomed vigor of intel- 
lect and argument, but rather exceeding it, he poured out the 
indignation of a spirit that was terrible in its wrath in propor- 
tion to the extreme difficulty with which its natural placidity 
could be overcome. In favor of General Washington and the 



so 

administration, he wholly denied that the proclamation requi- 
red the construction which Mr. Hamilton had put upon it ; that, 
though it certainly contained some language wdiich he regret- 
ted as liable to misconstruction, yet, taken altogether in its pro- 
per sense, it did nothing more than remind all concerned, that 
the relations of peace, which could only be changed by the 
legislative power, existed between the United States and all 
other countries, and that the laws and duties of peace must 
be strictly observed. But this was a small matter compared 
with that which had drawn him into the controversy — it was 
the doctrine of Pacificus with which he had to do — a doc- 
trine which had struck him as so extraordinary that he decla- 
red that scarcely any thing else than stating it in the writer's 
own words " could outweigh the improbability that so extrava- 
gant a tenet should be hazarded at so early a day, in the face 
of the public" — a doctrine which he pronounced to be " preg- 
nant with inferences and consequences against which no ram- 
parts in the Constitution could defend the public liberty, or 
scarcely the forms of republican government." 

Nothing in the writings or sayings of Mr. Madison, before 
this period, has struck me with such profound admiration for 
the character and genius of the author, as these Letters of 
Helvidius. As a commentary on the Constitution, I place 
them above any part of the text of Publius, not so much in 
point of learning and critical acumen, but because they erect 
at once a beacon and a rampart at that very quarter of the sys- 
tem w^hich was most exposed to a hostile attack, and where, 
if ever or by any means, the enemy must enter to sack the 
republic. I do not say that with this work of the immortal 
Helvidius the republic is forever safe, but I do say that with- 
out it, it would have wanted those indispensable defences 
which could not have been so well erected at any other time, 
or by any other hand. In my judgment, it was a service this, 
rendered to the whole country and to the cause of republi- 
can liberty, second only and scarcely, in importance and val- 
ue, to that which had issued in the establishment of the Con- 
stitution itself. 



30 

I cannot undertake to follow Mr. Madison minutely 
through the remainder of General Washington's administra- 
tion. The relations of the country both with England and 
France were critical and greatly disturbed. The people, as 
well as their oflicial representatives in the general government, 
were irreconcilably divided in their views of what policy 
the dignity and honor of the nation demanded. ^In. Madi- 
SOK, as I have already intimated, differed from the Presi- 
dent and his advisers, on some of the most prom ncnt and 
important measures of the administration ; but it should be 
observed that, in all cases, where the matters of difterence 
were mere questions of policy, his opposition, though always 
firm, was yet marked throughout w ith that moderation and 
gentleness which was a part, and a beautiful part too, of his 
nature and character. Whenever, however, the subject of 
dispute involved the construction of the C(tnstitution, then the 
case was changed — then the case admitted of no compromise. 

Probably no single act of any administration since the 
foundation of the government has produced such a deep and 
wide spread agitation, and such a conflict of opinion through- 
out the whole country, as did the Treaty of 1794 negotiated 
with England by Mr. Jay. Causes, which cannot be here 
detailed, had combined to prepare the public mind for the 
most violent ebullition, on the first announcement that the 
mission to England had been attended with success. The 
storm w hich followed, was met by the President with his ac- 
customed firmness. The Treaty was ratified, and thus be- 
came, in the view of the President, by the express terms of 
the Constitution, the supreme law of the land. 

This Treaty embraced several objects, which required the 
concurrence of the legislative power, in order to carry the 
stipulations into complete efl^ect. Proceedings were had 
which brought the consideration of this Treaty before the 
House of Representatives, and with it, perhaps, the most em- 
barrassing question, concerning the distribution of powers un- 
der the Constitution, which even yet has ever arisen. 

The Constitution seemed to have separated in the most 



31 

complete manner, the treaty-making power, from the legisla- 
live. The power to make treaties was expressly confided to 
the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, 
But the instrument was equally express, in vesting the legis- 
lative power in Congress, of which the House of Represen- 
tatives was an integral part. The subjects of national inter- 
est and concern which might be contained in a treaty, were 
left wholly undefined by the Constitution, and it would seem, 
therefore, that every thing was within the treaty-ma- 
king power, over which, according to the usages of nations, 
that power had been accustomed to be exercised ; and if this 
was so, then the President and Senate had authority over 
many of the most important subjects which, by express enu- 
meration, the Constitution had seemed to have confided solely 
to Congress, and which would appear also, on every principle 
of safety, to belong properly to the legislative department of 
the government, and not to the executive. 

The doctrine of the President, and of those by whom he 
was sustained, was, that the President and Senate had exclu- 
sive and paramount authority to bind the country absolutely, 
by a treaty, on all subjects, without limitation, which were 
proper to be embraced in that kind of compact between na- 
tion and nation ; and of course, where a treaty included pro- 
visions, which, under our system, must pass the forms of le- 
gislation, why there Congress must legislate, but must not de- 
liberate — in short, in such cases, Congress had no will but to 
obey, and to disobey would be to rebel. 

In hostility to this doctrine, the temper of the times carried 
the opposition, as usual, into extremes ; and it came to be insis- 
ted on most strenuously that the treaty-making power, did not 
extend to any object which was included among the enume- 
rated powers given to Congress. This position would not only 
have made the British treaty a nullity in all its most impor- 
tant stipulations, as having been concluded without any autho- 
rity whatever, and only by a sweeping encroachment on the 
Constitutional powers of Congress, but, if adopted and set- 
tled as the true interpretation of the Constitution, it would in 



32 

all cases and forever, leave to the President and Senate, as 
the treaty-making power, little, if any important business to 
do, and erect Congress into the true treaty-making power, in 
their stead. 

Now here was a case for the interposition of the pre-emi- 
nent wisdom and counsel of Mil. Madison. Accordmjr to 
his notions of what government ought to be, and of the way 
to protect and preserve liberty under republican and consti- 
tutional forms, it was necessary to take care, on the one 
hand, that the system should not easily collapse on account 
of the weakness of its materials and structure, under the 
weight and pressure which might be brought to bear on it 
from without, and it was equally necessar)', on the other 
hand, to take care, that in giving it the internal strength and 
energ}', requisite for its purpose and its position, it should not 
be too liberally supplied with the means of multiplying its 
own power, lest it should consume the liberties of the people, 
creating within itself an agent of terror, and tyranny, and 
oppression, productive of nothing but apprehension and suf- 
fering while it should last, and ready every moment to end in 
a destructive and horrible explosion. Mn. Madison could 
not agree that the treaty-making power should be withdrawn 
from the hands in which the Constitution had placed it, and 
transferred to another department. This would have been to 
make the government dangerously weak in a j^oint where it 
ought to be strong, and where the Constitution had clearly 
designed to give it strength. His opinion, therefore, was, 
that the President and Senate must not be restrained in the 
objects of negotiation and treaty with foreign powers, 
except within the appropriate and customary limits. 
But, at the same time, it was quite impossible for him to 
agree that the President and Senate, in the exercise of their 
appropriate function, should, by possibility, have it in their 
power to take tlo whole government of the country essen- 
tially into their own hands — preserving, indeed, the existence 
of the House of Representatives, because the Constitution 
requires that formality, but stripping it of the essence of its 



33 

legislative capacity — the right of deHberation and choice — sub- 
stituting in its stead a distinct nation, and conducting and 
effecting every important act of legislation for the country, in 
the name of treaties, and through the medium of negotiations 
and compacts with foreign powers. " If, said Mr. Madison, by 
treaty, as paramount to the legislative power, the President and 
Senate can regulate trade, they can also declare war, they 
can raise armies to carry on war, and they can procure mo- 
ney to support armies. He did not see but they might, by a 
treaty of alliance with a nation at war, make the United 
States a party in that war. They might stipulate subsidies, 
and even borrow money to pay them ; they might furnish 
troops to be carried to Europe, Asia or Africa — they might 
even attempt to keep up a standing army in time of peace, 
for the purpose of co-operating, in given contingencies, with 
an ally, for mutual safety, or other common objects." His 
opinion, therefore, finally was, that while the power of ma- 
king treaties should be left with the President and Senate, in 
general terms as it was bestowed by the Constitution, yet in 
every case of a treaty requiring the formal co-operation of 
the national Legislature, it was the duty of Congress to exer- 
cise the function of legislation, with the power of rejection, 
and with all that deliberation wdiich was necessarily implied 
in the high authority with which the Constitution had invested 
it. 

In the event of the discussions on this interesting and ex- 
citing topic, in the House of Representatives, that body 
adopted and passed, by a considerable majority, a declara- 
tory resolution affirming its power over the subject of trea- 
ties, in exact accordance with the opinions which had been 
expressed by Mr. MAmsoN. 

Having settled the principle, Mr. Madison had no scruple 
in acting upon it. He was opposed to the treaty with Great 
Britain for reasons'that were satisfactory to himself; and he 
thought it ought to be rejected. This was a question of 
policy — a question of expediency — a question, it is true, of 
vast magnitude and importance, involving the most momen- 

5 



34 

tons considerations in the position the country then occupied 
— a question too, undoubtedly, Nvhit h was made the pretext 
and occasion fur ihc exhibition of some personal niahgniiy 
and Some pohtical charlatanry — but yet a (jucstion, about 
which a (hlFerence of oj)inion among wise and good men was 
not only to have been expected, but could not, in the na- 
ture of the subject, have been avoided. M'hen the question 
was presented to tlie House of Representatives, whclhcr laws 
should be passed to carry this treaty into crttct, Mu. jM\ni- 
soN led the debate against the pro[)osition : and if it had t)cen 
in his power, would have arrested the execution of the trea- 
ty l)y his vote. The House determined, however, by a ma- 
jonty of three, to pass the necessary laws. 

It is delightful to know and reflect, that notwithstanding the 
decision and power with which this eminent man stood up 
against many of the favorite views and measures of General 
Washington's administration, yet he did not for a moment 
lose either the respect or the confidence of that great man. 
Of this he had several very signal proofs. AVhen Mr. Jefler- 
son retired from the r)fficc ol Secretary of Slate at the close 
of the year 17D3, Cien. Washington solicited Mu. Madison's 
acceptance of that high and confidential station. When the 
mission to France was resolved on, in the next year, he of- 
fered to make him minister to that country. And, finally, 
when the President, at the close of his term of office, came to 
perform one of the last, and most solemn of all the acts of his 
public life, the preparation of his incomjiarable Farewell Ad- 
dress to his countrymen, he solicited and received, and to a 
considerable extent adopted, the counsel and suggestions of 
Mr. Madison, concerning the manner of the Address, and the 
topics which should be embraced in it. 

Mr. Madison retired from Congress, and to private life, at 
the close of Washington's administration. But he was not, 
in his retirement, an unconcerned or inactive observer of 
passing events and public alfairs. Under the administration 
of Mr. Adams the embarrassments, growing out of the rela- 
tions of the country with France, still continued, and were 



35 

greatly increased. Hostilities actuall}'' existed, and were prac- 
tised, between llie two countries. In the mean time, a vigo- 
rous and relentless opposition pressed upon Mr. Adams on 
every side. And, what was the most irritating of all to him 
and his friends, and the most unendurable, was, tliat the 
country was infested with foreigners, the emissaries and 
agents of the dominant powers of France, who employed 
themselves in heaping unmeasured opprobrium on the public 
authorities, and in unwearied efforts to overwhelm the go- 
vernment in a storm of popular fury. That Mr. Adams was 
an eminently honest man, with an intellect of a very superior 
order, and with the purest pati-iotic purposes, no man of any 
party, I believe, is disposed to deny at the present day. But 
his temper does not appear to have been of that philosophic, 
and imperturbable cast which so greatly distinguished his 
predecessor in the presidential office. In the ardor and in- 
trepidity of his natural temperament, and under high provo- 
cation, he gave his official sanction to measures which were 
in violent hostility to the temper of the times, and to the 
habits and sentiments of the American people. The Alien 
and Sedition Laws, as they have ever since been called, pass- 
ed in the second year of his term of office, aimed though they 
doubtless were to counteract the corrupt and profligate de- 
signs of the French Directory, against the peace and prosperi- 
ty of the Union, by suppressing the machinations and traduc- 
tions of their emissaries and agents here, yet were so undefined 
and comprehensive in their possible application and import, 
as to produce, and even at this distant day we must say not 
without good reason, a degree of agitation and alarm through- 
out the republic, such as no other act of the government be- 
fore or since has ever raised. And by his sanction of these 
two laws, Mr. Adams placed underr.eath his administration a 
lever, with its long arm of power in the hands of the opposi- 
tion, which could not fail, as it did not fail, to aid in overturn- 
ing that adininisf ration within the shortest possible period. 

But while the nation was aroused with the aspect and atti- 
tude of rigor and oppression, of violence and tyranny, which 



36 

the govemment seemed to them to have assumed ; and while 
the politicians of the countr}', prompt to seize every promise and 
occasion of advantage, were active and instant in their imputa- 
tions of evil design, and in magnifying, before the atlViglitcd 
imaginations of the people, every real and supposed danger, 
there was one individual in the Union who turned from the 
clamor set up by politicians and the public, to consider 
with hiinself, in the calmness and quiet of his philosophic re- 
tirement, what were the actual and true dangers to the coun- 
trj', which these measures threatened, and by what means 
their dangerous tendency could best be met and counteract- 
ed. 

It is evident that Mr. M.vdison acted on the settled convic- 
tion, that the republic was safe just so long as the government 
should be administered, in purity, strictly witiiin the terms 
and principles of the Constitution — but no longer. lie was 
accustomed therefore, to detect with instinctive promptness, 
the earliest indications of any hazardous departure from the 
line of the Constitution. He saw, or thou£rht he saw, in the 
Alien and .Sedition Laws, acts of government which were " a 
deliberate, palpable and dangerous breach of the Constitution, 
by the exercise of powers not granted." And this view of 
the subject once taken, was sufhrient to arouse him to an ex- 
ertion of all his energ}' and all his influence. He was now 
in private life, but, proverbially modest though he was, he 
could not fail to regard himself, as the nation now, and forever 
will regard him, not only as the Father, but as the elected 
Guardian and Expounder of the Constitution, through whom 
for the time being, under Providence, the integrity of that sa- 
cred instrument should be preserved, as it had been original- 
ly established and adopted. To this task, in all humility, l)ut 
with even more than his accustomed vigor, did Mr. Madison 
now address himself 

The course to be pursued was, to cause Resolutions to be 
introduced into the Legislature of Virginia, passed there, and 
then transmitted to the other States of the L^nion for their 
concurrence. He was of opinion that this was the most rea- 



37 

dy and effectual mode of reaching, at once, the people and 
the government, with the language of sober but earnest rea- 
son, and of solemn and firm remonstrance. He held, indeed, 
certain notions concerning the Constitution — as an instrument 
constituting a compact to which the States were parties, ta- 
king lor granted, at the same time, the right of the State Le- 
gislatures to be heard as expressing the sense and opinions of 
the States as political communities — which made the course 
of procedure he proposed to adopt pecurarly fit and appro- 
priate. But whatever difference of opinion there may have 
been, and yet may be, in respect to these particular views, still 
there cannot, one would think, be much disagreement about 
the strict right of any State, through some fit and proper or- 
gan, to express an opinion on any Constitutional question 
which may be raised by any act or measure of the general go- 
vernment. Whatever may be thought of the positions just 
referred to, and which may be called the peculiar doctrines 
of the Virginia school — certain it is, that we have a govern- 
ment under the Constitution — a government composed of re- 
presentatives — and if the States may not be called parties to 
the Constitution, they are at least, constituents of the govern- 
ment, directly and exclusively represented in one of its most 
important branches, the Senate of the United States. Deny 
who will, the right of the constituent to make his voice heard, 
in some appropi-iate form, in the ear of his representative, yet 
who ever does so, must expect to find that his denial will be 
met with the contempt or the rebuke of all who have cor- 
rectly learned the elementary principles of representative go- 
vernments. 

Mr. Madison prepared a series of Resolutions, which 
were passed by the House of Delegates of Virginia, on the 
21st of December, 1798, and agreed to by the Senate four 
days afterwards. These Resolutions, besides expressing in- 
cidentally the peculiar notion concerning the nature and ori- 
gin of the Constitution already referred to, affirmed, as the 
sense of Virginia ; — That the powers of the federal govern- 
ment were limited by the plain sense and intention of the 



38 

Constitution : — That the States were bound to interpose in a 
palpable and dangerous case of the exercise of powers not 
granted ; — That, in several instances, the government had 
manifested a disposition to enlarge its powers by forced con- 
structions, and by drawing [)owcrs from general phrases, 
whenever they could not be found in particular enumera- 
tions ; — That, in the cases of the Alien and Sedition acts |)ar- 
ticularly, powers had been exercised which had no-where 
been delegated to the general government, but which, on the 
contrary, in one of the cases, had been expressly forbidilen; — 
That those acts therefore were tNco>sTiTi tional. The He- 
solutions, were transmitted to the several Slates, with an invi- 
tation to co-operate with ^'irginia in maintaining the rights 
of the States and of the people. The answers received from 
the various States, were uniformly unfavorable, and sDmc of 
them in rude hostility, to the r)piuions, and to the mode of 
procedure, adopted by ^'irginia — a state of public opinion on 
the important subject in hand, supposing it to have then been 
faithfully indicated by these answers r>f the respective legis- 
latures, which was destined to undergo a rapid and thorough 
revolution, ending in nothing short of an utter political pros- 
tration of all who had been concerned in originating the ob- 
noxious measures, and of all who had adopted the obnoxious 
principles by which those measures had been supported. 

The Legislature of Virginia of the next year, to which Mr. 
Madison had allowed himself to be returned with a view to 
this very service and subject, proceeded to take into conside- 
ration the answers which had been received. A Report on 
these answers was made by Mil. Madison, as Chairman of the 
Committee to whom they had been referred, concluding with 
a Resolution «»f firm adherence to the doctrines and posi- 
tions of the Resolutions of 1798. 

This Report is the niost elaborate, and in many respects it 
is the most able, of all the productions of Mr. Madison's pen. 
It is not too much to say, considering the nature of the topics 
embraced in it, the course of study, the habits of thought, the 
clearness and steadiness and compass of mental perception 



39 

demanded for the exercise, that it could not have been writ- 
ten, at that day, by any other man in the nation. 

The Report, with the Resolution appended to it, having 
been adopted by the Legislature, this last great service ren- 
dered by Mr. ]Madison to the Constitution of his country, 
was finally consummated. It is not necessary in order to 
pronounce favorably on the pre-eminent value of this service, 
that all the views, assumptions and conclusions expressed by 
him in these papers, should, without exception or limitation, 
have met with the concurrence and approval of the united 
sense and wisdom of the nation. It is enough to know that 
he here propounded and enforced certain great leading and 
fundamental rules and principles, to be observed in the read- 
ing and rendering of the Constitution, which have been re- 
ceived, and become rooted in the public mind, as the settled 
and unalterable law of that instrument ; which, from that day 
to this, have been the only doctrine on the subject which the 
country would tolerate ; which no administration and no pub- 
lic man has ever dared openly to disavow ; and which, it is 
safe to say, will stand as the deliberate judgment of the na- 
tion as long as the Constitution and the Republic shall endure. 

It must not be forgotten, or omitted, in this connection, 
that it was attempted not long since, in certain quarters, to 
make Mr. Madison stand responsible, on the ground of his 
Resolutions and Report, for the abominable doctrine of nulli- 
jication by State authority. This attempt was met by Mr. 
Madison himself, in a very decided and explicit manner. In 
August, 1830, he addressed a letter to a distinguished gentle- 
man of Massachusetts,* in which, after holding up this doc- 
trine to reprobation and contempt, by a simple but beautiful 
exposition and argument, he proceeded to vindicate the Reso- 
lutions of 1798, and the subsequent Report, in the most ample 
and satisfactory way, from the imputation and odium of hav- 
ing originated, or even favored in the remotest degree, the 
gross, insane, and shocking heresy alluded to. If the modern 
advocates of that doctrine must endeavour to fortify them- 

* Gov. Everett. 



40 



selves with an ancient or early precedent, they must look for 
it in another qiiartrr. If Mr. Jefferson held this opinion, let 
it be understood distinctly, that, by no influence, even by that 
of the most close and contidential friendship, was he able to 
indoctrinate Mii. Madison with his views. If the doctrine 
may be found in the Resolutions of the Kentucky Legislature 
of 1798, and 1799, which were drafted by Mr. Jefl'erson, it 
cannot be found cither in the Hestjlutioiis or Report drawn up 
by Mk. ]Mai)iso.\, or in any thing else Tvhich ever flowed 
from his intellect or his pen. 

The residue of Mii. MAniso.N's history, my friends, must 
now be briefly told. Mr. Jefl'erson came into the presiden- 
tial oflice in 1801, and Mr. Madison took his api)ropriate 
place at his right hand, as Secretary of State. From this 
time, for sixteen years, he was never out of office, or re- 
lieved, for an hour, from a principal share in the burthens 
and cares of Slate. The difliculties and trials which the 
country encountered during the eight years of Mr. Jefl'erson's 
administration, grew almost wholly out of the state of its for- 
eign relations ; and Mil. Madison stood at the head of that 
Department, to which belonged the first and principal cogni- 
zance and care of these relations. How he ac(pjitted himself, 
posterity will know. The history of the period, so far as the 
United States are concerned, is written in his oflicial and di- 
plomatic correspondence. The chief of the belligerent pow- 
ers of Europe, mad with pride or drunk with blood, first com- 
mitted every species of Vandal outrage on the rights of neu- 
tral nations, and on the rights of this nation particularly, and 
then insulted them with the doctrines which they set up to 
justify their practices. How both were met by the Secreta- 
ry — the injuries and the insults, the acts of violence and the 
doctrines of justification — are recorded by his own hand : 
and if he had done nothing else in his life-time, this record 
alone were enough for the monument of an enduring and glo- 
rious fame. 

In 1809, he became President of the United States. The 
moment of his entering on the direction of public affairs, was 



41 

one of the most critical in our history. Nearly all the expe- 
dients for the preservation of peace, had been exhausted in 
the time of his predecessor. Reason, and remonstrance, and 
the claims of justice, and the cries of humanity — all had been 
found unavailing ; whilst the system of non-resistance with 
commercial restrictions and embargoes, had created danger- 
ous enemies at home, but had made no friends abroad. No- 
thing remained for him, but to wait the effect of the last un- 
promising measure of Mr. Jefferson's policy — that of prohibit 
ting all commercial intercourse with Britain and France — and 
then to rush into war ; it might be with either, it might be with 
both of these powerful nations. In the event, war was de- 
clared against Great Britain only. 

Mr. Jefferson was not more a philosopher, than a man of 
the people, and, to some extent, he staked the success of his 
administration on popular sentiment and popular feeling ; and 
the god he worshipped was not to be appeased, and kept in 
placability, without costly sacrifices. To make the merits 
of his administration the more conspicuous and appa- 
rent, his superior sagacity led him to see that it was impor- 
tant to give it some cast of contrast to those of his predeces- 
sors. He made the excellent virtues of economy, retrench- 
ment, and reform, the order of the day. The remnant of the 
national army was accordingly reduced ; and the navy was 
nearly annihilated. In the meantime the Ocean — that great 
Common and Highway of the nations — was infested and swept 
by public robbers — great and small — barbarian and civilized 
— robbers without authority, and robbers by authority. To 
revive and create a navy, for the protection of American com- 
merce, and American citizens on the sea, would be to create 
burthens for the people, by increasing the expenditures of the 
government — and as the majority of the people were not mer- 
chants, or political economists, it might be difficult to make 
them readily comprehend how the interests and wealth, the 
moral and physical advantage of the nation at large, would be 
promoted, by protecting and encouraging commerce, at the 
expense of maintaining a navy, and perhaps at the expense 

6 



42 

of a war. There was but one alternative — withdraw the cam' 
merce of the country from the Ocean — abandon the great 
hifihway because there are robbers there — confine the citizen 
to his farm, and his workshop, and his counting-house — and 
then he will be safe. 

This policy bore Mr. Jefferson triumphantly through ; but 
it left the country in no condition to make the scat of his suc- 
cessor an easy or an enviable one. Peace could not be aban- 
doned till the last hopeless experiment, that of non-intercourse 
already instituted, had been fairly tried. War, all the while, 
seemed inevitable at no distant day. The Ocean could not 
be regained — commerce could not be restored — confidence 
and self-respect at home, and honor and consideration abroad, 
and private and public security, could not be recovered with- 
out it. War was inevitable, if it had only been to satisfy the 
insolence of foreign powers, grown more insolent by a policy 
which icfis forbearance, and seemed to be submission ; that 
Americans could and would fight when there was no other 
safe or honorable alternative. War was inevitable, so at least 
thought Mu. Madison, the very Man of Peace ; and yet, by 
the popular sentiment, by the popular political wisdom of the 
period, there must be no army, and no navy, while the peace 
lasted. Still the war was inevitable, and it came — it came 
— on the responsibility of the President, voluntarily assumed 
— and it came, of course, with little previous, and no ade- 
quate preparation. 

The war was brief, but it was severe. It proved the 
strength of the Constitution. It proved the patriotism of the 
people. It proved the valor of the American arms. The 
war resulted in an honorable peace, — the more honorable be- 
cause it was concluded as promptly as possible when the ob- 
jects of the war had been substantially gained. It was not 
waged to propagate abstract principles by the sword, but to 
compel the enemy to forego his injurious practices — not for 
the pride of forcing him to a formal recognition of our doc- 
trines, or to a formal promise of good behaviour in future, but 
to teach him that we understood our rights if he did not ; that, 



43 

hold what opinions he would, the actual violation of these 
rights would no longer be tolerated, that the practices — the 
practices — of which we complained, must cease now, and 
cense forever ; and that henceforward, our security should be 
found, not in any concessions on his part if he chose to with- 
hold them, but in the promptness with which the good right 
arm of a brave and gallant nation should be bared to do battle 
for Justice and the Right, in the name and by the strength of 
the God of armies. 

Having conducted the nation successfully through the war, 
Mr. Madison turned, with the nation, to the more congenial 
and deliglitful duties of peace. And he retired from Office 
on the 4th of March, 1817, leaving all the affairs of the Re- 
public ill a state of high and palmy prosperity. 

For nearly tw^enty years from this period, and to the close 
of his life, he dwelt at his favorite seat in Virginia. He there 
enjoyed that blessed quiet, and that almost uninterrupted 
happiness, which is sometimes, even in this life, the reward of 
the good man. He felt that the work which his heavenly 
Father had given him to do, had been done, and well done. 
And even still he did not refuse to perform such services for 
his fellow citizens and his country, as became the dignity of 
his condition, and as his remaining time and strength would 
allow. He assisted in the revisal of the Constitution of his 
native state. He aided the cause of agriculture bv an able 
Address. He made active exertions in behalf of Education 
and the spread of knowledge. And, finally, holding himself 
aloof from the party politics of the day, and especially care- 
ful, while he would not condemn the course of public affairs 
unnecessarily, never to stain and mar the beautiful consisten- 
cy of his own life and principles by approving of measures 
and practices at war with his own, he cheerfully consented to 
furnish, as often as requested, from the fountain of his own 
experience and wisdom, his coimsel and advice on topics of 
high constitutional import, and of paramount public impor- 
tance. With the performance of these duties ; with study 
and literary labor ; dispensing a simple but elegant hospital!- 



44 

ty ; preserving great regularity and order in his domestic 
economy ; enjoying in his beloved wife, the care, and con- 
verse, and womanly devotion of one of the most accdmplislicd 
and excellent of her sex, respected, lionored, loved ; owing 
no man any thing, whether money, or service, or reparation 
for undesigned injuries; having done all the good of which 
he was capable, and never given just cause of otVence to any 
human being — thus he lived — and thus did the number of his 
days run out — when, on the 28lh of June last, sitting in his 
chair, tenderly watched, with the face of yearning but now 
deeply troubled atVeclion bending over him to receive his last 
earthly look, without one struggle to retain his hold on life, 
or one pang at the dissolving of nature, he quietly yielded 
back his pure spirit to the God who gave it. 

Gentlemen ! Young Men ! called as I have been, by 
your partiality, to set this eminent individual before you, 
may 1 be permitted now to indulge the hope that the invalua- 
ble lessons of his life and character will not be lost upon you, 
or on that generation in our country, of which you arc a part, 
I implore the members of this Association — and if the assem- 
bled young men of the nation stood before me, and I could 
swell my voice to reach eveiy ear in so vast a concourse — I 
would implore them all, and each one of them, not to turn 
away from the influence of so bright and pure an example, 
until they should begin to feel within themselves the stirrings 
of those elevated and ennobling sentiments, those lofty and 
unalloyed aspirings, those swelling and generous thoughts, 
those Hrm, resolved, uncontaminated, unconquered and un- 
conquerable purposes, in behalf of our beloved country and 
her institutions, which that example is calculated to inspire. 
In my heart of hearts, I believe and feel, that favorable im- 
pressions in the (juarter referred to — the adoption, by the 
young men of the Country, of sound principles, of charitable 
but correct estimates of public men and public measures, and 
of a better morality than commonly prevails in public affairs — 
that in this, and in this alone is the last hope of the land. 
Look, 1 beseech you, to the example of Madison — it may be 



45 

long" enough before you shall be called, to contemplate such 
another — look to his example, and take the profit of the con- 
templation. 

Regard him in the circumstances of his early history. Ob- 
serve him, feeble and infirm in health as he was from the 
cradle, devoted to study ; acquiring habits of application and 
toil ; chaste, temperate, sobei', thoughtful : — See him at the 
close of his academic days, then in the very heat of youthful 
blood, withdrawing himself, not from society, but from the 
followship of unprofitable indulgences, to occupy successive 
years in interested converse with the Wisdom of History, 
with the Genius of the Past, with the Principles and the Men 
of Ancient days, with the novel Spirit of the Present, and the 
legible secrets of the Coming Time— with every thing, in 
short, which could tend to fit him for the performance of ex- 
alted services to his country — services on which he had never 
dared to enter without the consciousness of some adequate 
preparation to bring him up to the eminent level of the work. 

Look at him, as he enters on the career of active life and 
public duty, and while in the midst of official occupation. 
With no feverish anxiety to rush into responsible station ; wil- 
ling to serve where he could and ought, but fearful to venture, 
and waiting till the voice of his country called ; shrinking 
from no toil at her bidding, anxious only for her prosperity, 
praying for her peace ; the friend of Liberty, but the sworn 
enemy of licentiousness, and knowing no Liberty without the 
coercive power of government and law ; the friend of the 
People, entertaining towards them a becoming respect, a 
generous confidence and a kind and enduring sympathy, but 
never stooping to flatter or cajole them ; never descending to 
the level of that low and dishonest ambition, which employs 
itself in exciting and ministering to their base propensities, 
and their blind and miserable passions, with a view to take 
the chance of following in the wake of their turbulent track, 
or of mounting on the raven wing of the tempest when it is 
up — but on the contrary, always treating them as trusting 
to their undoubted capacity of answering to appeals made to 



46 

the nobler feelings, and higher sentiments of our common na- 
ture ; believing them apt to be right, but often wrong, because 
liable to be misled by the ignorant and the intriguing; serving 
their interests faithfully, and in the right way, at whatever 
hazard of incurring their present displeasure ; looking confi- 
dently for a steady breeze, from the right (juarter to fill his 
prosperous sails, instead of spreading out a mighty breadth 
of alluring canvass, to catch every breath and pufi'of popular 
favor, to the imminent peril of his eventual fame ; dealing 
honestly and plainly with the people in all his public conduct ; 
endeavoring to bring them to the right, when they were 
evidently in the wrong, instead of watching to lake the popu- 
lar current whether wrong or right ; supporting party and 
supported by party, but never mistaking paity for country, 
or sacrificing country to paity ; regarding ofTii-e as a trust, in 
which the public is to be served, and not himself or his 
friends; standing beside the Constitutittn as with a naked 
sword, flaming with truth and argument and terror, to protect it 
from desecration — never daring to plant an uniiallowed foot 
upon it himself, or allowing another to do it, but if done in 
spite of resistance, sounding an instant and loud alarm, to 
wake the hf)Sts of the nation to the rescue ; always firm be- 
cause settled in his purposes, yet always gentle — at least, 
never roused to violence at any wrongs, or to indignation, but 
at the wrongs of his country ; and always consistent with 
himself, and without disguises, because grounded in honesty 
and principle which need no concealments, and never 
change. 

And finally and especially. Young Men ! look at him when 
the chief honojs of the Republic are on him — when he 
stands vested with the highest oflicial dignity of the greatest, 
because the freest nation on earth — see him, finding his au- 
thoritv, not in his oflice, or in the name of his office, but in 
the Constitution only ; scrupulously respecting the authority 
of every other department of the government ; the President 
of the nation, and of the whole nation, conducting the go- 
vernment for the general welfare, with a policy broad 



47 

enough to embrace every citizen and every section; sur- 
rounding liimself with the wise and the worthy for counsel 
and support ; with a presence of purity, elevation and moral 
dignity, which the fawning politician cannot approach, and be- 
fore which the corrupt and corrupting minion of power dare 
not appear; recognizing no qualification for office, without 
personal purity, without a high sense of honor, without pub- 
>> lie principles which would not be regarded as sound in po- 
"" litics if they were nut also sound in morals ; with much pow- 
er, but no patronage ; with no private enmities to gratify, and 
taking special heed not to be misled by private friendships; 
with a multitude of offices to bestow — but no favors — and a 
wide country full of talent and virtue to fill them ; — thus con- 
ducting public aftairs in a way to promote public morality along 
with public prosperity, and of course in a way to strengthen, 
by the mighty influence of government, and not to weaken, 
the only foundation on which the government rests. 

No wonder that his public course, though difficult, was a 
successful one. " I shall carry with me " said he, as he was 
about to retire finally, " I shall carry with me sources of grati- 
fication which those who love their country most will best 
appreciate." Gifted, favored, venerated man ! We catch the 
spirit of that happy sentiment — we would rise to the contem- 
plation of the conscious virtue that inspired it — and, in that 
contemplation, forgetting all meaner excellence, and filling 
our grateful hearts and memories with the living image of 
those sublime qualities which alone constitute true greatness 
— thus would we set up our standard of political estimation — 
and thus would we learn henceforward how to measure both 
our own and others' claims to the gratitude and admiration of 
the country and of the world ! 



'\. 



CHARACTER AND SERVICES 



OP 



JAMES MADISON, 



BY DANIEL D. BARNARD. 



Lr, ,>!y '09 



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